Stand with Walmart workers this Black Friday

“Because they don’t treat me like a human being.”

This Black Friday will be a special one for Walmart as employees from the store plan to strike on retail’s busiest day. Check this video out to find out why–and why we should support them.

Warning: Whatever you do, do NOT read the comments. I’m still kicking myself for it. Transcript here.

This strike follows a cluster of other Walmart strikes across the country over things like unsafe working conditions, sexual harassment, excessive hours, and low pay. Learn more after the jump.

Natasha Lennard reports:

“Employees at 1,000 Walmart stores across the country are planning to strike on Black Friday. The holiday period industrial action comes in the wake of a string of strikes by Walmart workers in several states and involving employees throughout the retailer’s supply chain. As Josh Eidelson noted at the Nation, “seafood workers [went on strike] in June, [followed] by warehouse workers in September, and by 160 retail workers in twelve states last month.”

“Black Friday,” wrote Eidelson, “workers have pledged — barring concessions from the company — will bring their biggest disruptions yet.” Walmart employees across the country have a host of grievances including unsafe and unsanitary working conditions, sexual harassment, excessive hours, forced labor and low pay. Ned Resnikoff at MSNBC flagged a leaked internal document (first obtained by HuffPo) that revealed that base pay  at Walmart’s Sam’s Place stores can be as low as $8 an hour (or $16,000 per year), with wage increases in increments as low as 20 or 40 cents per hour. To put this in context, Gawker recently highlighted a Demos study that says that raising the salary of all full-time workers at large retailers to $25,000 per year would lift more than 700,000 people out of poverty, at a cost of only a 1 percent price increase for customers.

Then, when Walmart announced plans to open stores on 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving day — to extend the Black Friday shopping extravaganza in over 1,000 locations — more workers threatened to join the picket lines and strikes kicked off early in some areas.”

Please stand in solidarity with Walmart workers this Friday–and every day.